‘They’re releasing my husband’s killer’: the price of Israel’s hostage deal

In a quiet house in Israel, Hadas Mizrachi watches the excitement over the hostages’ release with a mix of joy and sorrow. For her, the hostages’ release is not just a national story – it is deeply personal.

The release of terrorists in exchange for hostages is deeply personal for Hadas Mizrachi, tinged with her own mix of anger, betrayal, disappointment and sorrow, because her husband was murdered by Ziad Awad, who is set to be released as part of the exchange deal despite serving back-to-back life sentences. Picture: Liam Mendes.

The celebrations have already begun sweeping across Israel. After more than two years in captivity, the final 48 hostages are about to be freed, ending one of the most harrowing chapters in the country’s history. The national nightmare appears to be over.

But in a quiet house in the town of Modi-in, Hadas Mizrachi watches the excitement with a mix of joy tinged with anger, betrayal and sorrow. For her, the hostages’ release is not just a national story – it is deeply personal.

To secure the freedom of those 48 people, Israeli authorities are preparing to release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences. Among them, she said, was the man who took her husband’s life in 2014.

“It’s a circle,” Ms Mizrachi said from her living room on Sunday. “They kill, they sit in jail – and I don’t call it jail, it’s a good place in Israel, they get everything they want – and now Israel is releasing them.”

Ms Mizrachi speaks with a quiet but firm conviction about what she sees as a fatal flaw in Israel’s approach to combating terrorism. Militants know their lengthy imprisonment may not be permanent; a court might impose a life sentence, but Israel’s commitment to bringing home its citizens creates opportunities to bargain for an early release.

Hadas Mizrachi and her murdered husband Baruch Mizrachi at their wedding in 1995.

Baruch Mizrachi.

The Palestinian prisoners scheduled for release are each affiliated with the Gaza-based Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, along with members of the secular Palestinian nationalist movement Fatah, concentrated in the West Bank. Israel is also due to release an additional 1700 Gazans who were detained during the recent conflict.

Among the prisoners are some of Israel’s most dangerous enemies: Imad Muhammad Ahmad Siraj, imprisoned since 2004 for suicide bombings that killed 16 Israelis; Mahmoud Musa Issa, serving three life sentences for the abduction and murder of an Israeli soldier in 1992; Raed Sheikh, a Palestinian police officer who participated in the October 2000 lynching of two military reservists who accidentally drove their car into Ramallah.

For Ms Mizrachi, each name on the list represents a potential future threat to Israeli lives. In principle, she is strongly opposed to exchange deals of this kind, although in this instance she strongly supports the return of the hostages. Her regret is that it didn’t come about through an alternative means.

“It’s very, very hard for me,” Ms Mizrachi said. “I know that we’re changing blood with blood. They killed my husband. We’re releasing them. We don’t know who he or the other terrorists will kill (next) – because they all the time say, ‘we will always kill you’.”

Her husband’s murderer, Ziad Awad, is no stranger to Israel’s prisoner-exchange policies. In 2011, he was released as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, in which 1027 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for one kidnapped Israeli soldier. Critics warned at the time that such exchanges would endanger Israeli lives – a prediction that has since proven tragically accurate.

Hadas Mizrachi says terrorists like Ziad Awad, who murdered her husband, should face the death penalty so they can’t be used as part of a hostage deal. Picture: Liam Mendes

Released alongside Awad was Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who would orchestrate the October 7, 2023, attacks that resulted in the kidnap of 251 new hostages. Freeing them required the re-release of Palestinian prisoners, perpetuating the cycle.

Awad had originally been imprisoned for murdering Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities. Three years after his release, he positioned himself by a roadside near Hebron with a Kalashnikov rifle, waiting for the right target. When the Mizrachi’s car passed by, he opened fire.

Police Chief Superintendent Baruch Mizrachi died instantly. His pregnant wife was struck by bullets in her back and leg – fragments that remain in her body today. One of their children was also wounded. The attack shattered a family and validated critics’ warnings about the Shalit exchange.

Ziad Awad at the Ofer military court in 2017.

“If we would have a death penalty, so there wouldn’t be more kidnapped people – and that’s what I believe, and that’s what … Israel should do,” Ms Mizrachi said.

Israel does maintain capital punishment, but has used it only twice since 1948: once for treason and once for Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. In Ms Mizrachi’s view, this restraint enables the violence that claimed her husband’s life.

Awad’s impending release brings fresh terror to Ms Mizrachi’s life. He will likely return to his village near Kiryat Arba, where her parents live. Supporters will welcome him as a hero. There is also a real possibility that she or her children might encounter him.

The prospect terrifies her – and for good reason. “We know how he looks,” she said. “It won’t be easy for us and he once said, ‘If I will see you, I will kill you,’ he told me that – in the court, he said it to me.”